Saturday, September 06, 2008
TATA in Singhur is a different breed than the TATA of Jamshedpur
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
To, The Editor, Afternoon, Mumbai
Apparently TATA in Singhur is a different breed than the TATA of Jamshedpur
Ratan TATA should have paid market price for the land his project required for NANO small car plant. If the new India of liberalisation and globalisation has finally opted to adopt free market economic norms, Ratan Tata's exploitative use of West Bengal's Communist regime's dictatorial mode of governance, has resulted in great injustice to farmers and small landholders in West Bengal.
What kind of industrialisation is this that for supplying the lowest price car to the world at large, poor farmers of Singhur and Nandigram are made to sacrifices not only their subsistence level small farm holdings but their lives too, in brutal armed police and Communist cadre reaction by the West Bengal's Chief Minister shooting down agitating farmers.
Ratan Tata, in best and noble tradition of his Jamshedpur family's social commitments, should have shown deeper commitment to social causes and should have in his Nano car project’s feasibility calculations worked in the cost of rehabilitation of the displaced landholders' economic well being. He could have made all of poor farmers and landholders, shareholder of his project, giving them a stake in the future of not only TATA but in the nation itself. A more than generous purchase settlement would not only had ensure long term security and stability for Nano Car and its ancillary industries, but would have shown a leadership way to introduce new humane version of India’s neo-capitalism.
The ganging up of robber barons, to justify their anti-people policies in amassing wealth for a selected few is saddest part of the whole episode.
Each and every industrialist should have been motivated to reflect more realistically been blinded to the future of the poor and deprived people of India, who have been increasingly impoverished by increasing inflation that has become the hallmark of the expanding economy.
It is regrettable that Ratan Tata has chosen the path of confrontation and blackmail. Whatever may be the real politick of the CPIM and/or Mamta, the basis of the injustice meted out to the people of Singhur and Nandigram, cannot be condoned.
It may be of grave importance to the pluralist India, to know that Muslims formed a sizeable majority of the Singhur and Nandigram’s deprived population and West Bengal’s communist regime had been clearly condemned by Sachar Commission report, for the worst discriminative treatment of the Muslims who formed 28 percent of West Bengal’s population and who have most loyally voted CPIM coalition to a 30 year long stretch of continued rule.
Ratan Tata should rethink the whole project and start with generous rehabilitation of the poor people in West Bengal.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com
